Marilyn's Photos - May 17 2026 - Rogue Driverless Taxi
How can it happen that a driverless Waymo taxi gets confused? Then it "evaded" support crews. Sounds like a human driver, doesn't it? And that's what I worry about - AI behaving human. We're crafty and shifty things.
It is hard to find out more about this story as it comes out of FOX 10 Phoenix with only the headline and a news video that's mostly talking heads. The incidentdatabasess.ai says that it repeated drove away from roadside assistance.
Phoenix seems to have all the action, despite the fact that there are 10 major U.S. cities with Waymo driverless taxis. In another incident in Phoenix, a Waymo robotaxi drove into oncoming traffic, ran a red light and "freaked out" when a police officer attempted to pull it over. It makes one wonder how to know a driverless car has "freaked out." And again, what is the similarity to human behaviour? Or is that just language used to get our attention. These seem to be sensationalist news articles to get clicks for all those ads.
The news coverage and video are on the FOX 10 Phoenix site. I was surprised by the weather alert on the home page with no indication of what kind of weather is being warned about. I scrolled down for a while and found out it was a wind warning.
There seems to be a fair amount of negative coverage of Waymo's fleet in Phoenix. It gets one a bit concerned as Waymo wants to introduce programs in Toronto and in B.C. - would we be seeing headlines about "freaked out" driverless cars?
Tesla has a supervised self-driving capability available in Canada - it requires a human driver behind the wheel. But in a driverless car - where is the steering wheel? This is expected to disappear by 2035. And once steering wheels disappear - brakes and gas pedals are also going away.
My sense is that we have worries over individual cars. We have lots of traffic with so many things happening on the roads. Wouldn't it be a better approach to start with driverless buses? They have defined lanes and routes, often excluding cars. There are already driverless buses with no steering wheels in operation in China and Norway.
This is an interesting area of inquiry to me. I see differences between the Canadian and U.S. coverage of the subject. And the Canadian articles include government regulation and where things are headed. U.S. articles highlight the number of accidents and Waymo vehicles being pulled off the road for safety concerns. There's no mention of government supervision and monitoring. I don't think I would have noticed these differences 2 years ago. I wonder how things will be 2 years from now.
Here are some beautiful Candelabra Primulas from 2017 at Chanticleer Garden in Pennsylvania.
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